In this paper we aim to use the interviewer notes from a lost sociological
project to answer two broad, interrelated, questions: i) how was family life documented
and represented by the researchers in their interviewer notes and ii) what does analysing
interviewer notes in this way add to our understanding of families and households? The
answers to these questions are considered in the context of a further question – why did
the young worker research contain so much data on families and households when the
research was concerned with young workers’ early workplace experiences? In answering
these questions we offer some insight into family life in the 1960s as documented by the
researchers and locate Elias’s young worker research within the context of the other large
sociology research projects being undertaken at the time.